


cracked mirrors

by marzipan (orphan_account)



Series: fairy tale nonsense one-shots [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 17:33:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15393849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/marzipan
Summary: a steampunky bluebeardish storyplease please heed the warnings





	cracked mirrors

The carriage rolls to a stop and Molly Hooper pokes her head out of the curtained window. New Europa, for all its storied glitz and glamour, smells just about the same as anywhere else. Worse, actually, given the massive smoke stacks marring the skyline. At least in the countryside, there had been wildbushes, and further out, maybe even a tree. 

 

"That'll be two silver coins," the driver calls back out to her. Molly winces, aware that the likelihood she's getting ripped off is high, but having few options by way of reparations at the moment. She scrambles for her traveling purse -  _ not _ the bundle of savings she kept close to her heart - and digs inside it. 

 

Blood draining from her face, she stares up at the driver. 

 

"I've one silver coin and - 18 coppers," she says quickly. That's only two coins short. The driver frowns nastily at her, but takes the coins. He opens his mouth, but before he can think to bargain for her jewelry or some equally obscene trade, she adds, "I've two stamps as well, that should come out to about enough."

 

She's dressed plainly enough that her line seems earnest. The driver waves her off, and leaves Molly to remove her trunk from the carriage herself.

 

Her clothes are far from the latest fashions, but clean and well-kept. They suit her, and she cherishes them for it. The trunk too, a leather-bound, auburn chest she inherited from her grandmother. Grandmother was dead now, as was Mother and Father. Hence the trip. Hence bringing everything she had of value with her, carrying as much of it as she could on her person, close to her person.

 

The carriage speeds off - or as quickly it can manage in the crowded city centre anyway - and Molly turns, struggling a bit with the trunk, nearly knocking over a man as she steps onto the sidewalk.

 

"Oh, careful there," he says, and Molly pokes her head around the trunk immediately to try to catch a glimpse of his face. The soft, melodic voice was so at odds with the heavily, chopping rhythm of the city that it caught her attention at a moment's notice and she had to see the source.

 

A clean face with round, warm brown eyes greets her, strong hands helping her pick up the trunk that slipped from her grasp. Molly reaches for it again, but he keeps an easy hold on it.

 

"Oh, I'm just close by," Molly says, keenly aware of how close their hands are. "It won't be any trouble."

 

He just smiles. 

 

"Which way? It's no trouble for me, I swear it. All the moreso if it's close," he says. "My name's Jim, Jim Brook. You're new to the city miss?"

 

“Molly Hooper,” she introduces herself. She smiles, then takes a step back. “I’m heading to the boarding house on Hestia Lane - maybe you can show me where that is?”

 

.

 

Jim is a perfect gentleman. 

 

He drops Molly off at the boarding house pointing out all the shops to know along the way- but before he goes - 

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so forward, but - really I usually don’t do this, I don’t mean to intrude on such a beautiful woman such as yourself having newly just come into the city - “

 

“Here,” Molly says, handing him a card. 

 

“What’s this?”

 

“Card for the boarding house. It has a number on the back - we have access to the telephone from 9 to 9. Call on me?”

 

The smile he gives her is nearly reward enough itself.

 

.

 

Molly doesn’t have to wait long for him to ring her. He stammers out an invitation to lunch just the next day, and though she can’t make it, he walks her to the hospital where she’s gained employment before coming to the city. They make up for it with a quick lunch date the day after, and then drinks, and then dinner.

 

He’s walking her home one night, and catches her hand before she ascends the stairs.

 

“There’s a ball tomorrow night. I know it’s short notice, but, I was hoping you could accompany me?”

 

“A  _ ball _ ?” Molly asks with a laugh. That was for former aristocracy, the now barons of industry, up in their high towers without a care for reality.

 

He smiles apologetically. 

 

“A work thing,” he says. “My employers has invited all his staff, it would be awfully rude of me not to go, and so much more pleasant with you on my arm.”

 

She smiles back.

 

“Of course,” she says. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

 

He jogs up the two steps to give her a kiss to the cheek, and then hops back down.

 

“I’ll send over the costume,” he says. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

 

Molly blinks. Costume?

 

.

 

A beautiful package arrives the next day - gorgeous gown, glittering mask. All perfectly her size.

 

Must be custom made, Molly thinks, holding the garments up to her body in front of the mirror. A crystal-encrusted, silvery bodice that melted down into the darkest blue sea of skirts, nearly black by the time it reached the hemline. A blue-and-black bird-like mask with feathers fanning out on the sides. 

 

“My God,” Molly breathes out. 

 

.

 

Molly spins as Jim throws her, then comes crashing back into her arms.

 

She’s seldom had a chance to dance, and knows she really isn’t any good at it, but it’s lots of fun in any case. Here, with masks and hats and costumes, it’s hard to tell who anyone is.

 

Jim’s taken the liberty of dressing them in similar color schemes, black and blue and silver, but with different themes. His silvery mask is reminiscent of the theater, and a blue cape drapes over his immaculately cut black suit like a knight.

 

They break after the song ends and Molly, giddy on champagne, finds herself flanked by two other women, one in green and one in red.

 

“Ooh he’s handsome. I can tell, even with the mask on,” green says, when they ask who Molly came with and she points Jim out. He’s mingling, or something like it, possibly for work. She couldn’t care less, with her head surrounded by stars and feet dancing above the clouds.

 

“He looks reeeally familiar,” red says, and Molly just smiles.

 

She later realizes she doesn’t even know what he does for a living.

 

.

 

Just days later they have dinner on a terrace, one of those sky-high buildings you have to crane your head all the way back to see the top floors of, and Molly feels her stomach swoop as she looks out at the twinkling city.

 

“Molly,” he says, clearing his throat, suddenly serious.

 

She looks back to him, and sees he’s gotten down on one knee, taking her hands in his.

 

“I know this is soon, sudden even maybe, but I have never felt this way before and I am sure I shall never feel this way again. My love for you, Molly, and I do love you, so much, cannot be contained. I must have you spend the rest of your life with me. Please. Will you marry me?”

 

This  _ is _ fast, and he’s mysterious and this is all going  _ so  _ quickly, but who is ever going to make her lose breath like this again? 

 

She says yes.

 

Jim is fascinating, perfect for her, almost  _ too _ perfect, and she finds it worrying - but thrilling - that when she’s with him, sometimes, she just wants to crack open his skull to get a better look at the mind inside.

 

.

 

Jim is a scientist.

 

Molly walks with him through his lab, an entire floor of it, third floor up from a factory where he heads the research and development endeavors to produce better products. Testing the structural integrity of materials, for instance. Creating stronger metals. More flexible rubber. 

 

Molly studied science too, but things in the realm of anatomy and medicine and not so much engineering. She takes a keen interest in his work nonetheless, and he bubbles over with excitement at her work, because he feels the two fields are not so far apart after all.

 

“I’ve been trying to get the company to get into the medical field,” Jim says. “We create the little knicks and knacks that hold a machine together, or a building together, or or - why not a human? Why not the mind?”

 

“What is it that makes  _ us work _ , anyhow?” Jim asks.

 

Molly notices he gets lost in these discussions easily, and has a particular interest in death, or how it comes about. Most early students in her field have similar obsessions at the beginning, she remembers, and this is par for the course. And as a tinkler, well, she supposes it’s in his nature to want to pinpoint the failure of the body and create a way to fix it.

 

“What is it that leaves our bodies that stops them from working, part by part?” he asks. “Is it the heart, really, or the brain? Which one controls the others?”

 

Work spills over into his personal life, and an entire wing of his manor home is practically a lab itself. It’s far more cluttered than the one at the factory, because Jim uses it for experiments and pursues riskier endeavors than he would for the company here in his personal space.

 

The house is just  _ darling _ . With its beautiful baroque finishes, it is like an antique out of time, and all of it is her’s now, he reminds her, as he kisses her hand bringing her over the threshold, and calls her the lady of the house.

 

But there is one room at the far back of the house, Jim’s study, that he will not show her.

 

It’s just a little door at the back of Jim’s lab, and Molly moves to open it when he takes her hand and steers her away.

 

He smiles that soft, loving smile and says, “Maybe some other time.”

 

She asks again not two weeks later, and he seems surprised. The evasive way he blinks and turns from her gaze raises her suspicions, and he can sense that as well.

 

Jim goes quiet for a long while before he finally says, “It’s work, but it’s a bit private.”

 

He puts on a blank mask, as if scared she will judge him.

 

“Please give me some time. To think about it. I do want to share it with you, I do. But, perhaps it's not ready yet. I'm not ready yet."

 

Molly tells him she appreciates the candor, and respects his decision.

 

But the next time she asks, he’s even more evasive.

 

The idea of that loose thread left undone eats away at her. 

 

One night, she hears him entering the lab from her room one floor above it. She hears a giggle. Is it Jim? Is he with someone?

 

In the morning he looks so sated and conversation is so pleasant she doesn't know how to broach the subject.

 

.

 

Curiosity gets the better of her.

 

There is a pipe that runs from the second floor hallway outside her bedroom to the space that Jim has taken over as a lab. While he is at work, she fits two small mirrors into it, to create a spying glass.

 

That night, Molly watches Jim lock up and hide his key in a false book piled seemingly randomly on his desk.

 

Then she waits until he goes out for a business dinner a few days later, and feigns a terrible migraine and stays home. 

 

“I’ll stay with you,” he says, kissing her knuckles and smoothing her hair back.

 

Molly shakes her head, then winces. “No, it’s too important to you, it is, you’ve been talking about this all week. Securing that contract with the hospital will change everything. Think of all the research we’ll be able to do.”

 

He looks torn, but relents.

 

Molly waits until the carriage is out the gates, and then waits some more.

 

Taking off her shoes, feeling like a burglar in her own home, she fishes out the key and approaches the private, secret study. 

 

The key unlocks the door neatly, but it creaks as it opens.

 

It’s completely dark inside, and Molly curses having not brought a lamp in hand.

 

But even without light, the coppery smell that hits her is unmistakable.

 

Blood.

 

She squints in the dark, eyes adjusting.

 

Then gasps - covers her mouth. She takes a step back as she catches locks of hair, dark and wet, hanging from a metal table. Her eyes follow it up to a white, stained sheet. A covered head. A covered body? Bloodied beyond belief by the smell of it. Fresh, by the smell of it. 

 

She’s caught between going forward to examine it and going back to get a light when the choice is pulled out from her like a rug

 

"Molly, Molly, Molly." It's her husband's voice, low and solemn. She turns around, confusion etched on her face.

 

"Didn't want to have to do this  _ so soon _ but I will, oh I will, and I will enjoy it," he says, serene smile on his face so unlike the soft looks she's become accustomed to. 

 

Too late she notices the fireplace poker in his hand. She doesn't even have time to scream when he picks it up and swings it, crushing it right into her skull.


End file.
